Farewell Unicorn!

Tales from the River Thames has finally set sail away from The Unicorn, and we're all very sad to have left. We'll miss our lovely damp tunnel, and all the wonderful people at The Unicorn, but unfortunately we've come to the end of our run and the pirates have to return to the high seas, and the mermaids to the depths. Thank-you to all of you who came along to share in our little adventure - we hope you enjoyed yourself! And thanks to all those involved for all your hard work. Here are some final shots of the amazing space, transformed into a watery wonderland by Bicat&Rigby: Photos by Claire Haigh [SC]

Tales from the River Thames feedback

With only three shows left to go and most of the run sold out NIE have had a great time in the tunnels with Unicorn Theatre. We have been thrilled with the response and are looking forward to playing our final schools shows tomorrow!

Written by Cat Moore

Tales from the River Thames sets sail...

After months of preparation Tales from the River Thames finally kicked off last week. We were quick to discover that creating a show in a railway tunnel does have its problems, as when it began to rain in earnest outside it also started to rain inside! But not to be put off the cast and crew cracked on and last Monday’s opening shows went swimmingly (almost literally…).

We’ve been very lucky to have such lively audience members who have really got stuck in to all the stories. Our pirates have had a lot of fun keeping up with the kids as they take them from one story to the next (that should read 'the pirates taking the kids' but there were occasions where it could have been the other way round!). It was especially fun to have two of the schools who had contributed to the show with their stories come and see the show last week – Hill Mead and Bessemer Grange both spent time with the company last year working on material for the piece, and there was one story from each school in the final piece.

Despite the slightly damp conditions we’ve been having a fantastic time telling tales of mermaids, pirates, sharks and all manner of things that happen in South London – or as the lockkeepers Bill and Albert call it, "Saaf London Taaan!"

So, we only have a few more performances left, as we have to leave our damp train tunnel and the lovely people at the Unicorn on the 23^rd June, but hopefully before then we can have a few more pirate adventures and dive for a few more gigantic pearls. For now I’ll leave you with some lovely words from the children of John Donne school…

“It was brilliant, there were so many ideas and it was just one big story added together and the people were so amazing, especially Jason’s face, it was so gobsmacking.”

“I couldn’t believe it myself that they put it together to make one big story moving on from show to show.”

“It’s just gobsmacking, see what the imagination can do, it can just change the world. Every class that joined, every school, it’s just one big imagination.”

“This show has been great, there has been so much imagination put into this and so much thought.”

SC

Bill and Albert, the Lock Keepers in Tales from the River Thames, having a final dress rehearsal before we open tomorrow in London!

Wall of Monsters

Today we created a wall of monster pictures created by all of the Primary School pupils we have been working with...
...and the fresh turf arrived for our Lock-keepers cottage garden!

Using the space

We continued rehearsals in the space finding ways to link all of the stories together...